Look, there’s Angelina Jolie! Angelina, how is the world faring on the health and human rights fronts? Oh, my gosh! It’s Bono! Bono, what needs to be done about African poverty? Hey, Richard Gere and Sharon Stone, how can we tackle the AIDS crisis?

In other recent security successes: the arrest of 50 suspected insurgents, including 17 wanted individuals near Kirkuk; discovery of yet another significant arms cache at Al Montessim; rounding up 25 suspects and weapons near Ad Duluiyah; rounding up more suspects and weapons around Mosul; detention of 36 suspects around Kirkuk, 36 suspects throughout Al Anbar province and 19 near Balad; detention by Iraqi police of a senior insurgent operating an illegal checkpoint in Baghdad; 59 suspects being rounded up throughout the Anbar province; and 42 suspects detained in the Mosul area. Lastly, “in eight separate locations near the Iraqi town of Latifiyah, Task Force Baghdad troops and Iraqi Army Soldiers uncovered a huge cache of weapons, munitions and explosives on Jan. 23… Thousands of small arms ammunition and hundreds of artillery, anti-aircraft and mortar rounds were uncovered west of the north Babil town. Hutton said the task force continues to uncover more munitions in the area, about 35 miles south of the Iraqi capital, putting a dent in any violent plans laid by insurgents.”

And lastly, while Ukraine might be withdrawing its troops from Iraq after the election, its security services have made a considerable contribution to Iraq’s security by preventing an $800 million deal to buy weapons and ammunition for terrorists in Iraq.

As someone said, failure is an orphan, success has many mothers. I wonder how long it’ll take for the UN to take the credit.

OF COURSE NOT ALL, but some people in Spain can’t fathom that, unlike what happened in Madrid on the general election on March 14, 3 days after the terrorist attacks, there’s a dignified response to Islamofascism.

Here at the humble abode in The Principality we count two HamColl alumni, The Husband, and the Father-in-law (now deceased). We’ve attended alumni reunions, given money, and had a favorable impression of the school and its alumni. I don’t exaggerate when I say that many, many Hamilton Alumni have become financially successful and very generously support the school’s annual drive. The Husband and I were even looking forward to third-generation HamColl alumni.

Dennis has a picture of Ward Churchill in full Che drag. Belgravia Dispatch examines Ward’s views, particularly the following, which he wrote on September 12, 2001 (Any visitors to this blog who want to read Ward’s words at his website are free to google him. I’m not wasting time linking)

The [Pentagon] and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center: Well, really. Let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire–the ‘mighty engine of profit’ to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved–and they did so both willingly and knowingly. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”

Hey, Ward, I worked in downtown NYC for many years. It could have been me in that building.

As for HamColl, it can invite whatever many Che-wannabe-impersonators/colorful characters it wants. But as far as I’m concerned, my support has ended. They obviously don’t need the gains from my enslavement to the “technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire”.

We are seeing wonderful things: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the elections in Afghanistan, the elections in Iraq. We live lives of privilege, and I’m thankful for our country, and for the people in the Service.

Jacques Chirac, arguably one of the most corrupt politicians of all time, yesterday gave a speech at the UN (that paragon of transparency) proposing to harness globalisation with a new “ethic for globalization”. The new ethic takes the form of a proposed $50 billion global tax on financial transactions, greenhouse gas emissions, arms sales, airline tickets and credit card purchases.

“It is up to us to give globalisation a conscience,” he said. “There is no future in globalisation that tolerates predatory behaviour and the hoarding of its profits by a minority. There is no future in globalisation that destroys the social and economic balances, crushes the weak and denies human rights.”

Considering Jacques’s own financial history, I found it interesting that he’d bring up “predatory behaviour and the hoarding of its profits” at all, but I digress. The tax idea fell flat — even the French didn’t like it. Now Jacques is back with more of the same, but this time he wants the Tobin Tax to go towards AIDS relief, too, a cause Jacques hopes will make the tax more appealing.

Less grandiose measures, such as clean water, free trade, and lifting the ban on DDT would probably improve living conditions in poor countries faster and more efficiently than any tax.

But then, if President Chirac really wanted to help the developing world, he and his country would not stand in the way of all attempts to make trade in agricultural goods free. Nor would France support every EU anti-dumping regulation. He would also support lifting all duty that is now placed in quite disproportionate degree on imports from developing countries.

. But in a hastily arranged speech delivered only hours earlier, Mr Chirac seemed to attempt to grab from Mr Blair (and Mr Brown) the intellectual lead on at least the second of those issues, by proposing new “international taxes or levies” to be used directly to finance development. For a start, he said, there should be an experimental levy to finance the fight against AIDS.

To what would this “international solidarity levy”—which Mr Chirac said could raise $10 billion a year—be applied? He had several suggestions: a very low rate of tax on international financial transactions, perhaps; a contribution by countries that maintain bank secrecy (hello, Switzerland) to compensate for the tax evasion they thereby facilitate; a tax on the use of fuel in transport by air or sea (which surely contributes to climate change); or even, say, a $1 levy on each of the 3 billion plane tickets sold each year worldwide.

This would not be, insisted Mr Chirac, that old French favourite, the “Tobin tax”, as proposed by the late Nobel prize-winning economist, James Tobin. But in the case of the levy on financial transactions, that is exactly what it would be. Such a tax has well-known disadvantages. It wrongly assumes that no cost would arise from the reduced liquidity in financial markets that would surely result. It also requires that all governments co-operate in levying the tax (unlikely, you might suppose); otherwise financial transactions would simply shift to non-co-operating countries.